Charles Harper
Régisseur
Japan/Yokohama/Seya Citizens' Forest
6.15.03, 10 am - 12 noon; Drizzly. First official patch day, and the weather inauspicious. I hadn't been here in June for almost ten years, though I bird it every other season. The seasonal change in habitat is surprising, quite drastic: open woodland has turned to closed canopy with the fullness of the foliage; open lawn has turned to waist-high grasses; waterholes I always check at other seasons are completely hidden, overgrown with weeds.
Bird species have changed too: no longer the variety we have in winter, I tally only 15 species, and few of most. However, there are more than usual of Japanese White-eyes, Great Tits, Eurasian Tree Sparrows, Barn Swallows and Japanese Pygmy Woodpeckers, many of which are young of the year, distinguishable at a distance by their bumblings and flutterings.
There are changes of a more permanent nature also. A couple of new truck gardens have been surreptitously carved from the weedy no-man's-land between the U.S. Navy base proper and the municipal forest. The Citizens' Forest is managed for and on behalf of the citizens of Yokohama, and so the planted cedars-- the bulk of the forest-- are pruned, culled and logged for and on behalf of the citizens. They exist in sections of varying ages, and this trip, a wedge of thick young trees of 10-12 cm. diameter, among whose tangle of branches I have always been checking hopefully for an owl-- any owl!-- has had all its branches trimmed to a height of about 4 meters and the ground beneath all neatly raked about the boles. It doesn't look at all owlish any more.
Finally, you should know that the Japanese have an incurable itch to improve upon Nature: when a kiosk or hide is built in a natural area, for instance, they cannot be restrained from planting ornamental shrubbery around, and importing decorative boulders. In my patch, they have now tastefully lined a length of its little stream with artistic rockeries, and put in a lovely hydrangea hedge. They put in some koi (carp) too, but these have evidently all died or been eaten or stolen.
One thing that we can do with our patches is keep track of the permanent changes being wrought by man or acts of God or Government and see whether or how much these changes link to changes in the birds we see there. Patch work of this kind, over the long haul, should produce information that can be used in supporting local conservation efforts.
6.15.03, 10 am - 12 noon; Drizzly. First official patch day, and the weather inauspicious. I hadn't been here in June for almost ten years, though I bird it every other season. The seasonal change in habitat is surprising, quite drastic: open woodland has turned to closed canopy with the fullness of the foliage; open lawn has turned to waist-high grasses; waterholes I always check at other seasons are completely hidden, overgrown with weeds.
Bird species have changed too: no longer the variety we have in winter, I tally only 15 species, and few of most. However, there are more than usual of Japanese White-eyes, Great Tits, Eurasian Tree Sparrows, Barn Swallows and Japanese Pygmy Woodpeckers, many of which are young of the year, distinguishable at a distance by their bumblings and flutterings.
There are changes of a more permanent nature also. A couple of new truck gardens have been surreptitously carved from the weedy no-man's-land between the U.S. Navy base proper and the municipal forest. The Citizens' Forest is managed for and on behalf of the citizens of Yokohama, and so the planted cedars-- the bulk of the forest-- are pruned, culled and logged for and on behalf of the citizens. They exist in sections of varying ages, and this trip, a wedge of thick young trees of 10-12 cm. diameter, among whose tangle of branches I have always been checking hopefully for an owl-- any owl!-- has had all its branches trimmed to a height of about 4 meters and the ground beneath all neatly raked about the boles. It doesn't look at all owlish any more.
Finally, you should know that the Japanese have an incurable itch to improve upon Nature: when a kiosk or hide is built in a natural area, for instance, they cannot be restrained from planting ornamental shrubbery around, and importing decorative boulders. In my patch, they have now tastefully lined a length of its little stream with artistic rockeries, and put in a lovely hydrangea hedge. They put in some koi (carp) too, but these have evidently all died or been eaten or stolen.
One thing that we can do with our patches is keep track of the permanent changes being wrought by man or acts of God or Government and see whether or how much these changes link to changes in the birds we see there. Patch work of this kind, over the long haul, should produce information that can be used in supporting local conservation efforts.
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so you know where to go and what to find when you ever return to this beautiful past you left behind.
